Do you really want 2021 to be different from 2020? Well it can be if you’re prepared to take these three steps:
1. GET READY
2. GET SET
3. GO
Or, in other words, RELEASE, SET YOUR INTENTIONS, and TAKE ACTION!
And what do each of these steps involve? Here is what they look like for me:
Release simply means to take a look (with compassionate curiosity) at what it is in my life that doesn’t really serve me anymore. What is it that, deep within, I know is getting in the way of my being able to experience life as I’d like it to be?
I have already taken that step as preparation for my own new experience in 2021. Have you? If not, ask yourself why not? And if you are coming up with ready answers as to why you can’t, ask yourself another question: Is it really true? I’m sure many of you recognize where I’m going with the questions…an old standby practice laid out in Byron Katie’s “The Work.” If you aren’t familiar with it, I encourage you to go out to YouTube and watch any of the many videos she has out there. If you work through the simple steps she offers, you’ll find it easier to “own” what’s blocking you from being able to accomplish the release step and move on to the next one.
SET YOUR INTENTIONS. How would you like the year 2021 to look like in your life, specifically, but also in the world around you? Because we do have a choice. We do have a voice in the matter, and our “voice” matters and will make a difference!
We all need some support in order to accomplish this step with GOoD results (notice the play on words!). And that support is within every one of us, but we must become still and listen for the “still, small voice” of Spirit/God and ask our Higher Selves, that spark of the Divine within, to guide us. And when we begin to subsequently hear the answers coming into the awareness of our conscious minds, we can choose to tap into some of the powers within us as well. Faith, Strength,Power, Wisdom, and Imagination, to name just a few. For these will carry us through the completion of this step and ready us for the next and final step.
TAKE ACTION. It is not enough to recognize where we may be getting in our own way and even being able to define and voice “how we’d like things to be” isn’t enough either. We must take action and step out in Faith knowing “God has our back.” And, quite honestly, we likely won’t really “know” that until we have let go of the reins and are willing to follow the inner guidance, trust the process, and see what happens, being reminded to live our coming days as much in the present moment as we can, so we are present to the opportunities that may be right in front of us, there to support the next step and the next.
When we find ourselves slipping back into entertaining old, false patterns of thinking (and based upon my experiences, it will happen when you least expect it), our awareness of this is also our opportunity to stop, shift, and choose a different thought, one that moves us in the direction of our intentions, in how we’d like to be and toward how we want to experience and see 2021.
When we are able to keep to these practices on a daily basis for an extended period of time (some claim it takes 21 days for us to fully establish a new pattern of behavior and thinking and more recently I was told it takes 66 days). In my view, we only need concern ourselves with TODAY, and be satisfied with “knowing about” God having our back until there comes a time when we can truthfully claim to “Know” it. For me, I’m really okay with “knowing” some things and recognizing others are things I only “know about.” Those are the areas of my thinking and behaving (or not behaving!) I am still working on and get to say, “Silly me! There I go again!”
Another thought just came to me. I was told, during the early days of my recovery from drugs and alcohol, to “act as if” whenever I felt like crap and really didn’t get all the “pink cloud” stuff I heard others, who had been sober much longer than I, talk about. That suggestion can work here as well. Keep acting as if the changes you’re making in your thinking and doing are feeling like second nature and, eventually, they will! The key to this is the strength of your desire and commitment to your intention; if you continue to keep an open mind and an open heart, and recognize that God is a co-creator with you, providing you all that you need, you will find 2021 will be very different from how it was for you in 2020 and maybe even better than anything you could’ve imagined before! Remember, there are no mistakes, only opportunities to learn and try something a little differently.
Here’s wishing you all a wonder-filled 2021, one where you experience a new level of joy, love, abundance and prosperity in mind, body, and spirit, and one where you can know you are making a difference in the world around you, just by BEing the best you can be right now!
Love & Light, Steven